


turn around (take me back)

by hitlikehammers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (No But Literally Though), (Now With a Coda Featuring Sam Wilson and Another Friend of Carol's), Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame Fix-It, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Gives Him All The Hugs, But Damn Does it Help In The Process, Carol Danvers is a Good Bro, Gen, Good Thing He Has Bucky Barnes To Lean On, Love Does Not Fix Everything, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Messy emotions, Old!Steve is a Skrull, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Has Issues, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Steve Rogers Is Not Okay, Steve Rogers Is a Mess, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Supersoldiers in Love, The Skrulls are Good Bros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:54:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22685824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: The simple fact is he owes Carol Danvers a debt that—even if he lives a thousand more years—he’ll never be able to repay.Or: Steve Rogers finally has nowhere left to run and comes face to face with his demons—and the fact that even Captain America can't face them all alone.
Relationships: Carol Danvers & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 38
Kudos: 214





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [M_bsides](https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_bsides/gifts).



> This is for [m_bsides](/https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_bsides)—it was meant to be a ficlet to improve their day but it...got away from me. I hope it still improves your day, doll, and serves as a heartfelt belated birthday gift!
> 
> My love, as ever, for [weepingingnaiad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad), because without her my writing, and quite possibly _me_ would not exist.
> 
> Title credit [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1BjndTZvQY).

_The truth is, he’s tired. He’s not sure he’s entitled to it; not sure he’s earned that excuse, but it’s the truth._

_Jesus, but he is so tired. _

_He stares out at the sprawl of nature before him, all water and green and the low hum of living things before sunset like an old film reel, speckled and washed out against his vision as he blinks, blinks, breathes in harsh and shaky and the horizon is murky—he doesn’t recognize the colors, their shades._

_And good god, he’s afraid. He’s afraid of what’s coming in the morning. He’s afraid their line will continue onward but that he’s too unsteady, unfit to stay on the tracks, to keep going: he doesn’t deserve it, he’s not enough. Probably he never was, but now— now, with the world in reach, gaping and immense and luminous once again, for the first time, beyond all reason or sense, effervescent: everything he isn’t, doesn’t think he can ever be again—now, the hard stone that clangs inside the beating of his heart sinks heavier, knows what he can’t shape in words._

_He’s so afraid that the last time he’ll get to see the face he holds most dear, his vision will still be unclear, and so his memory of those moments won’t be right, won’t be sure. _

_He flinches—after all, what’d happened the last time he took tomorrow for granted between them? And every time before? It hurts to hope, like his bones have bowed and bent beyond the capacity to hold it up, despite everything._

_That sounds about right. He’s a goddamn fool._

_He scuffs the dirt under his boot; too dry, billowing dust. He swallows hard, bites his lip until the sting there outweighs the one behind his eyes._

_He won’t count on what’s to come before it does; he knows better._

_But in his heart, the pattern is inexorable: some things are just doomed to repeat._

___________________

_The problem with tomorrow, when it comes, is not that it’s hazy; it’s too sharp. It draws blood and leaves no scars to look at, no tangible anchor to mourn._

_It’s worse, that way. That much he knows for sure._

_There are words between them, but he’s sure they don’t matter. He reaches out; he grabs and he holds, and he knows there’s something in his soul that either lingers back too timid, or else reaches out too fierce, and when those blue eyes watch him, unwavering as they pull away too soon, he’s not sure which it is—though he wishes he knew. Wishes knowing could ease the feeling of loss between his lungs like glass lodged deep in red muscle—like a vise clenching inward and pressure spreading ribs wide until they crack, until they break and pierce and then it’s happening. Then the machine whirs: ready._

_He watches for a second longer than he should because the longer he looks the more it will hurt. He knows that, but he can’t help it: some things are worth the pain, and you don’t learn your lesson the first time around, or the second, not because you’re foolish—though he is that, he knows—but instead, because you just don’t want to. Calculated risks—eyes open._

_He breathes, they both do, and then he turns, and he prays to something nameless that he’s never seen or heard or met, something to steady him. To keep them both, whatever comes next. His tongue tastes sour in his mouth. His heart is sluggish, in mourning too soon, or maybe just in time. He doesn’t know how to do this, he doesn’t think he can, he—_

_Then he’s gone._

___________________

_He goes through the motions. He shouldn’t hurt as much as he does. It should hurt, he’s not that delusional. It should flay him alive—but this._

_He knows being broken. Being unmade. Heart torn, bones shattered. He knows what it means to only breathe in pain, and yet this is something he doesn’t know any words for. Can’t see straight for. Can’t inhale around. He doesn’t know how he puts one foot in front of the other, because every step means another reminder, another wave of immensity he can’t hold against and falls before; beneath._

_She surprises him. He doesn’t know where she comes from, or when, or why. He doesn’t know why she comes to him, or stays—doesn’t stay for long, but keeps coming back, and in his heart, the way his heart feels now in tatters, all little torn up strips, that feels as close to staying as he might ever see again—but she does. She’s kind, even as she has very little patience, or maybe it’s just that he’s so drained, so empty, that everything feels fast, everything feels like it asks too much._

_He thinks she doesn’t mean to make him feel insignificant. He doesn’t think she tells him anything that isn’t true._

_He carries on, slower than he should; he has responsibilities, he has words he needs to uphold and vows he should have made with his voice but that his soul never knew how to be without holding. He moves, and the weight of the stone inside his heart seems to gather sharpness, like metal attracting knives, and he feels like he wants to scream, wants to sob, every moment he’s breathing._

_One time, when she comes to him, she sees it. He’d be real goddamn surprised if she didn’t; he thinks it’s the only thing written on his body, carved inside every part of him._

_“I know what it’s like, in a way. When you love that big, but the universe can’t see it. Carries on no matter the damage done.”_

_He feels the barest sympathy for whatever she does feel, but he doesn’t truly believe that she knows. _

_It’s not as hard as he thought it might be—seeing those lips through the glass and remembering their taste—because he suspects, in the strange and almost mechanical scrape of every heartbeat that moves him; he suspects that he probably doesn’t remember it right, anyway._

_He’s not sure where he goes, in between. He doesn’t think to ask when she finds him here, every time, because to find him means she must know, but he isn’t clear that it’s even the same place, the same plane each time, anyway. Fuck if he knows anything, really. Not anymore._

_She stays—really, this time, for a space at least—and it’s nice to have someone without expectations. Who didn’t know him before, who barely knows of him after, who just is. Who’s bigger than any of his mistakes, if not his heartache. She tells him things about a universe bigger than he can fully comprehend, and doesn’t mind when he’s often quiet in response. Before she leaves, she takes pity on him, or mercy, always; offers a lifeline, a chance, and a gamble and a selfishness—simple, unbearable simple but it’s a hand on his shoulder for only as long as he absolutely needs it, something she knows beyond any possibility of knowing—a favor he’ll never be able to repay, but he gets the impression she was never expecting him to._

_“You poor bastard,” she says, after they’ve been doing this for longer, or shorter, or just whatever counts as too much: after they’ve been at it a measure for a time that doesn’t fucking matter at all: “it’s the only thing that can save you, but you don’t even know how to run away.”_

_He can’t breathe when he avoids her eyes. His hands are bloody though he’s got nothing to show for it. His heart barely beats for the lead that seems to coat the chambers, each heavy themselves for all that he’s trying, he’s trying to keep safe there. To hold onto when there’s so very little left, when there’s nothing left—_

_“Look at me.”_

_He can’t deny her; god, but he tries, but he can’t._

_“You think running is shameful, don’t you?” She knifes him in the heart. “It’s not. The only way anyone survives is to learn when to run, and how. And maybe, most importantly,” he moves slowly, so he can flinch away if he needs to, and he wants to, desperately, but his body knows that it needs the touch of her hands on his chin to force his gaze to hers: “who to take with you when you do.”_

_His mind filters through faces he’s made a point not to think about, lest they flay him wide and let him bleed, and he gasps; she holds his shoulders through it, space between them, never too close: they still don’t know each other, even as she sees through him more clearly than anyone or any thing maybe has in the whole of his being._

_“If we don’t know when to run, we’ll lose,” she tells him simply, like she knows it from experience, and has accepted it to the marrow of her bones, beyond regretting: “we’ll lose.”_

_He sees bodies on a battle field, and the shards of his shield, and the bruises on beloved skin raised from the dead, or maybe from nothing at all, an ether all its own and he doesn’t even fucking know which is worse._

_“But think about all the things we won’t be able to do, or learn, or be, if we lose, and that’s the end?” she asks him, and lets go of his chin, trusts he won’t look away and that’s a tenuous, maybe foolish trust but he knows foolish, and it takes everything left inside him—which isn’t much—but he keeps his gaze steady._

_“We can’t even help pick up the pieces of what comes, when we lose, if we don’t know when to run, and make ourselves strong again to come back and do better.”_

_He only realizes that he can’t fucking breathe, can’t catch his breath and make his lungs expand until he starts to get dizzy, and her hands don’t wait to fame his face, his cheeks: rough. Demanding and clear as day that his life depends on listening. On seeing her and hearing her and taking in every word._

_He’s not sure he’s up to it, but there’s some shred inside all of the torn space inside him; there’s the stone in his heart that feels like an anchor weighing him to the depth of the ocean, like that’s why he can’t breathe: but that stone is what draws him to her, and makes her words plain._

_“It’s time to run, now.” She says it like it’s simple; or maybe, she says it like it’s true._

_“That doesn’t mean you can never stop.” His breath comes back, if only to catch and get stuck in his throat, eyes burning. “It doesn’t mean you can’t come back,” she whispers, and traces a fingertip gently, all sympathy and softness he hasn’t seen from her yet. It’s as disconcerting as it is necessary._

_“But it also doesn’t mean you ever have to.”_

_She turns, and leaves for wherever she goes. He feels the shape of his legs and stands for the first time in a very, very long time._

_He goes to Vormir, and he doesn’t look for anyone’s blood, but he feels the weight of a gun in his hand for the first time in a very long while; feels something for the first time in so long he can’t see straight, and he waits, he waits, he waits and he knows it won’t make a goddamn difference but when the red ghost of the thing that has taken too much of everything he is, everything he loves—when that thing comes, he empties as many rounds as he has into the ether. _

_It does nothing. Neither of them say a word, and that almost makes it even more meaningless. Makes him even more meaningless._

_She’s waiting for him when he gets back._

_“There are places, pockets outside of time,” she offers, without preamble; never moving, keeping distance. “You can’t stay there for long, no moral being can, but to,” she takes a breath, and then meets his eyes, and her own look for the first time like they contain the multitude of the universe in the way she’s always seemed to, only projected now for him to see._

_“If you could go there, and try to find some peace,” she says, a statement, but the beginning of an offer. “Space and time means nothing, life and death are arbitrary,” and somehow he knows what comes next, picks it singularly from all the words they’ve shared: too few, really, for it to be surprising, but too many for his mind, as it is, to wholly make sense of the way it should: but he sees it coming before it does, and already he isn’t wholly sure._

_“Of all the people you’ve known, and all the lives you’ve lived, do you know who you’d run with?”_

_He doesn’t know how to run. He’s never backed down from a fight. He thinks of the people who’ve known him best._

_His mother, who knew a different man, a boy really: no. He’d give almost anything to see her again, but to heal? No, no: she could only take him back to a place he’s long since lost._

_He thinks of Peggy, for a moment or two longer, but she’s much the same: her lipstick on his skin, her smile warm in his chest, and she could understand in theory, she could know and accept the unthinkable, but she knows in her heart a man who died in the ocean, in the ice, because of all the things he’s accepted—and even he can admit they’re few and far between—he knows that so many pieces of him were left behind when they brought him back that he’s almost a new man. New enough that the past can’t see him for what he is, not truly, not clearly. They’ll never fully accept what he’s become without trying to make it fit something that doesn’t exist anymore; in many ways, never did._

_Sam crosses his mind: Sam is a human being few people deserve. Loyal. Dedicated. Dependable. Giving. Kind. A little shit, and he loves that about Sam. But Sam, too, only knows what’s been shown, what curated version he allowed himself to display to the world. Had things been different, he thinks he'd have let Sam see, let Sam know—maybe not everything; no. No, not everything, but something. Something more than what Sam got, if things had been different. But things weren’t different._

_That’s part of what’s led him here._

_The words ‘life and death are arbitrary’ take him to the obvious place, the woman who knows him best of most people, the sister and the mother and the friend and the rock and the person he’d often held tight at night because human contact was scare and necessary and breathing in her hair made him feel less alone. But Natasha, his Natasha: even through all of that, as much as he learned and as much as she grew to trust him, she was only ever a given thing to a given person. More herself to him than maybe to anyone else, but he needed, he needed—_

_There was only ever one person who knew the whole of his heart, because that person held the whole of his heart. There was only ever one answer to the question._

_She sees it when he reaches it, before he nods._

_“Do you want that?”_

_He does, he thinks. Or else, maybe he needs it, and want has very little to do with any of it. He can’t go on like this, hell: he can’t go like this, can barely stand and move without the backs of his eyes burning and his limbs threatening to give way. They were supposed to make him indestructible, damnit._

_Fuck, but they should have thought about the strength of his mind. The beat of his heart._

_And yet still, he hesitates. He can’t bring his lips to move, his throat to propel the words. They made him indestructible—and he has a duty. He has to, he has to—_

_The woman, the other Captain—Carol, Carol, because now he thinks he can call her by her name; she sees him, sees something in him and tells him, and smiles a little wanly, with a little too much knowing:_

_“You’re not as important as you think,” and it’s a blow as much as it’s a balm and he doesn’t know how to react, exactly, so he stands perfectly still._

_“That’s a beautiful thing, you know? None of us are,” she walks to him, and grasps his shoulder, pulls him close enough that her face, the expression of openness in it is all he can see; “because when we’re gone, when we run or lose or follow a new path, fight a new fight, someone always steps up. Someone always feels that heat in their gut and says, me. I’ll carry the shield, I’ll wield the sword. Every single time.” She blinks, slow, and weighs him somehow in the balance._

_“Do you know why?”_

_He wants to believe he does. He wants to believe in goodness and the innate willingness of people to do what’s right, but he’s not sure what he believes in now; what’s left of him to believe in anything. He’s not even sure what’s right, not so deep in his bones that he could speak it into any sort of being that was worth a damn._

_“Because we have to, else there would be nothing,” she gives him reprieve, answers her own question. “Because we’re good, more of us than aren’t. And because we’re not meant to do this forever.” She pins him down with a look that’s quelling, and yet so goddamn kind. “No one is.”_

_He feels the tear escape his eye, but he can’t even properly process what it is, what it means, what it holds. She squeezes his shoulder under her palm._

_“Not even you.”_

_He opens his mouth, but all that comes out are gasps, are stammers that want to be words but are barely sounds. He needs to run, he’s processed that much. He needs to hope that Bucky will take his hand and understand that his heart beats for him, and maybe—probably—always has. But he doesn’t know how to walk away from the duty he’s shaped his life around. From the mantle he’s based all of who he is inside for so long: so long he’s maybe forgotten what he is, who he is without it._

_She reads him, clear as day: “ Not. Even. You.”_

_He nods, but his eyes give him away._

_“I know you’re afraid,” she says simply. And it’s the truth._

_“They’ll try to help,” he chokes, can’t believe of all the words, those are the first he manages._

_“And you’re not ready,” she nods; “you can’t tell them you have to run.”_

_He nods back. He can’t face his friends, his family, and turn tail like a coward._

_“It isn’t shameful,” she tells him, and there’s power in the words that almost makes him want to believe. “And I have the ability to let them know what’s happened, after you’re gone.” Her voice goes low, so soft as if she cradles his vulnerability close._

_“So they don’t grieve for long.”_

_His voice catches, and his fingers clench, and he can’t put into words what plagues him but again: she is something other than human. She sees._

_“I can also make it so the shield is given to another. I can help you pass it on to someone worthy.”_

_“Sam,” he says, and that’s a good word; that’s a better first word to have said._

_She nods._

_“I can make it so you, a version of you who can no longer hold it, hands it to him. Makes him know it is his.” He must look confused at this, as if it’s somehow the most unbelievable of everything that’s happened, here or anywhere else. She grins._

_“I happen to have a few close friends very skilled in that area.”_

_He mulls it over for a moment, before accepting it as much as fact as anything else._

_“I can take the rest,” she nods to his briefcase, and picks it up before he has a chance to assent or protest. “Best you don’t mess with the timeline any more than you already have around that particular pivot point, yeah?”_

_Her grin is sly, but he can’t return it. She sighs, and considers him closely._

_“This is not a fix-all,” she says, her tone grave. “You’ll have to do the work. You’ll have to try,” she tells him, stern with a kind of otherworldly wisdom, honest with a very human certitude; “to move forward. Else all of this may end up doing more harm than good.”_

_He nods, and prays again to the nameless thing that he’s not sure listened the last time, given for how much it all hurts, but he prays to it anyway, that he can manage. That he can find his feet and learn to be again, in the world, like a whole person even when his entire being feels like a mosaic, broken cruelly, after so many heartbeats had been wasted making something decent from that first mess of fragments. _

_“Running can be the most freeing thing in the world, you know.” She says, before she starts to walk away. She pauses, though, and returns to his side._

_“Take his hand, and until you’re ready?” and these words; these words, he knows, are the most important she’s said to him so far: _

_“Don’t look back.”_

_He lets them flow over him, lets himself sit in the way they don’t fit, and tries to make himself fit them, because if he knows nothing else, he knows something has to change. Something has to give, and he wants Bucky’s hand in his so desperately he would give whatever part of his heart still beats to him, leaden and bloody and less than half of anything worthwhile but it would be his in Bucky’s hands and that has to mean something._

_“And if you’re never ready?”_

_Her voice startles him, and he turns to her:_

_“That’s okay, too.”_

_And then she’s gone, and his hands shake as he grabs a Pym particle, drops it twice before placing it just so, and breathes, breathes, breathes even though it hurts like hell._

_He’s not sure where he’ll end up, but he knows where he’s going next. But suddenly, against all odds, like a man with the apocalypse at his back: he’s going to miss his landing, he’s going to aim for the trees, and he’s going back home. He’s going back to the soul that is his home._

_For the first time in his entire life, Steve Rogers runs like hell._

__

___________________

Steve wonders a little, in the very back of his mind, how he ends up dropping to the ground precisely where he does. There was a platform he left from, and he traveled to all the destinations he actually made his way to with what was—so far as he understood—painstaking accuracy, giving back exactly what had been taken away.

Before he went around fucking it up, and falling apart, in less than equal measures, but still.

Still: Steve doesn’t know why he ends up on his knees, the force of the fall bending the dirt, the soil of the woods, his hands buried in the guts of nature as they tremble against blades of grass that don’t deserve to die but that catch between his fingers and pull and god, god: _fuck_.

They’d always told him—brilliant strategist, for whatever that meant when it mattered—that he could often see the forest, and sometimes miss the trees.

He breathes, and it still hurts to do it, to make his lungs full, but he blinks, and his vision is as clear as he thinks it’s going to get and all there is, all he can see, all he knows aside from the weight on his chest and the lead-lined chambers that shape the beat of his heart:

All that he knows are goddamn _trees_.

Though, to be fair: before he can know anything else, the razor sharp edge of a knife is lined under the curve of his jaw, the pressure at the artery just _enough_ that it’d make the blood beneath do the work for the blade, would make it push harder and faster all on its own, and Steve knows two things, trees and metal, and maybe fear or death should be a third, but:

“Don’t move.”

The voice, that _voice_ ; but the scent hits him first, and Steve’s heart doesn’t do the blade any favors because that scent takes both ventricles and squeezes so goddamn _tight_ that Steve can feel the outline of that ever-present stone, that rock that wears little scars in the muscle every moment to remind him he’s got hell to pay for his sins and he’ll never escape them: he could trace it against the walls as they move if he closed his eyes, but he feels like if he closes his eyes something might get lost. The reality of what he thinks he’s feeling, sensing, _hoping for_ beyond all reason or right.

He cannot, he _cannot_ close his eyes.

“Buck,” he breathes without thinking, without meaning to—save that that’s the shape. Of the stone. The stone is shaped of so many things, Steve thinks, but what he feels pressed against the singular contraction in his chest is just him, is just James Buchanan Barnes and everything he’s ever meant, everything he’ll mean in Steve’s heart and soul until the end of everything there is or ever will be.

“You have five seconds to tell me who you are and what you want.”

That scent is still all Steve knows of home anymore, but that voice; that voice is steel. That voice is cold.

“Bucky?”

“I’d say you’re smart,” there’s a sneer in that tone, now, along with the chill; “though honestly,” and now, self-deprecation in the mix, and Steve doesn’t like it, doesn’t like how it curls in his lungs, tastes on his tongue just to hear it.

”Honestly, you’d barely have to do your homework to know this is the best shape to take if you wanted to try and throw me,” Bucky laughs, hollow. Steve remembers that sound, and all the nightmares attached. 

“But your intel’s old, pal.”

The knife hasn’t moved an inch on Steve’s skin. Bucky is statue-still. Steve feels like the world could crumble at their feet, easily, but that it’s holding its breath just for this moment, whatever comes of it. Whatever comes next.

“I don’t—”

Steve takes a minute to figure out words, to figure out how to use them or which to use at all, if any serve the purpose; they don’t, they simply can’t. But he tries, he does his best to work with what he has because though what he has is scarce it is the most precious thing in the universe.

His voice is hoarse, but goddamnit: he tries to make it steady.

“I don’t understand.”

There’s no indication that Bucky considers what he’s saying with any sort of gravity, any degree of weight until Bucky sucks in a breath—still doesn’t move, but that breath speaks volumes to Steve, who may have grown rusty about so much of what he knew, understood without thought or sense about Bucky Barnes over years they never should have lost: Steve may have grown rusty, but that pitch of air through clenched teeth?

That, he _knows_.

“Steve Rogers isn’t,” Bucky starts, and the way his words cut off is abrupt; unintentional. They’re either difficult—and that’s never stopped Bucky before, so either that’s not it, or something unimaginable has rewritten the rules—or he’s trying to find the right ones, just like Steve.

“Steve Rogers didn’t come back.”

Steve Rogers, with those words, is at a bit of a goddamn loss.

“I’m right here.” He says it before he thinks, because it’s both obvious or the absolute antithesis of that very thing, depending on what the truth is. But Steve knows how his heart beats, how that stone moves and lets him know that he is himself, and all the inescapable truths that entails: but what takes longer to seep into him is the idea that Buck’s voice was certain. Bucky’s voice was stoic in the way that means, now that emotions are _his_ to own again—Bucky’s voice gave nothing away, but also gave nothing at all except syllables and consonants. 

Something here is very, very wrong.

“Right,” Bucky snorts, and it’s a vile sound that makes Steve want to flinch; he has to actively fight against it. “I used to have ways of making damn sure people like you told me the truth about what you were up to,” Bucky says, almost nonchalant, and it takes even more willpower not to move for what _that_ means; implies. 

“You’re lucky I use far more humane tactics these days.”

Steve tries to control his breathing; he tries, and he does, but the way his lungs are falling in on themselves a little means he’s starting to suffocate slowly; makes the edges of his vision start to shake.

“I’ve been lax,” Bucky says, voice hard now; giving nothing away, but at least giving _something_ —Steve would break the surface gasping if he could, just for that little shred. 

“I said five seconds,” Bucky’s body shifts, though the edge of the knife doesn’t push any deeper, though neither does it give any reprieve. “Five.”

“Bucky, I—”

“Four.”

“Why don’t you believe me?” Steve asks, because he's grasping for words and the air to shape them is still a limited commodity. He doesn’t have the luxury of measuring them perfectly, just instinct and a need, a goddamn _need_ to make whatever this is right, and maybe cling to Bucky like every atom of his being is aching to; maybe, _impossibly_ to be held back just as tight.

“I’m right here, I’m Steve Rogers, I _came back_ ,” he tries to take a breath, deep as he can without jostling against the knife; mostly, it’s to buy him time, to clear his head.

“But you said I didn’t.” Steve rolls the words against his tongue; around in his head.

“What about me’s wrong? Where’s the lie?”

Bucky says nothing, doesn’t breathe for more seconds than Steve’s comfortable waiting through; he’s used to hurting, but this is something new.

“Three.”

“Please,” Steve doesn’t mean to beg, he really doesn’t: but his heart is starting to pound, now, and it’s going to help that goddamn blade at the pulse sooner than later and he can’t stand the way that Bucky sounds, he can’t _stand_ it; “ _please_ , Buck.”

He doesn’t even know exactly what he’s asking _for_ ; maybe it’s just Bucky. Maybe _please, Buck_ means precisely what it says, and not a damn thing more or less.

Whatever it is, whatever comes through—his desperation, his need, his confusion, the way he’s pulling precariously at the seams, or maybe the fact that Bucky’s touch is so sensitive, and his hearing so clear, that there’s no way he doesn’t know, one way or the other, the way Steve’s heart moves about to burst.

Whatever it is: Bucky breathes in deep again. Bucky doesn’t move his hand, or the knife, but he breathes, and he answers the question.

“Steve Rogers,” he says, tightly controlled around every letter of the words: “Steve Rogers left on a space-age platform to travel through goddamn time. And he did look a lot like you. Twenty minutes ago, hell,” Steve doesn’t know the name for the sound Bucky makes, then; just that he never _ever_ wants to hear it again. 

“Twenty minutes again, I might have given you the time of day.”

“What happened twenty minutes ago?”

Steve’s never been smart, exactly, about the chances he takes, about the way he pushes when he shouldn’t. But this time, _this time_ : Steve is pushing _precisely_ when he should. Precisely when he _has to_. No finesse, no plan, headlong and flailing, but he needs to know what pulled the heart from Bucky’s words, and put it somewhere it shouldn’t be, somewhere it isn’t safe enough to bleed into his voice, devastated or elated or anywhere between.

He needs to _know_.

He’s not sure Bucky’s going to say anything at all; in truth, he’s not 100% sure Bucky’s not going to drive that knife just a _little_ closer into his flesh—he won’t kill him, not in cold blood, but he’ll press him. He’ll make him answer his questions even when Steve has no answers to give because he doesn’t believe. He doesn’t believe that Steve is _Steve_ and that hurts in a way that’s new when Steve wasn’t entirely sure there were new ways _to_ hurt.

“He left with those goddamn stones,” Bucky says, and his voice is so quiet, too quiet to read and Steve breathes a little deeper, gets a little more oxygen because when Bucky’s voice gets quiet, it means he needs it to be so soft that it’s impossible to hear all the things it doesn’t say in words. 

“And he put them back like the idiot fucking hero he’s always been and he,” Bucky swallows, and Steve wants more than anything in that moment to turn, to be able to turn against and watch Bucky’s throat work around it. 

“He did what he always deserved to do,” Bucky decides, after a pause. “He went and took back the years the world stole from him, and lived his life with the woman he loved if the ring on his finger was anything to go by,” and his voice, then, is the softest it’s been; the stone in Steve’s chest, in his heart, has never been so sharp, or so heavy.

“And he grew old there,” Bucky’s voice is just soft, then. Not like a sandpaper scratch over silk. And he’s quiet, again, for a long time, before Steve can read anything in the tone when he speaks”

“I never thought I’d see him grown old, but I—”

There’s want, there, and if Steve lets himself read into it, there’s longing. There’s missed opportunities, and every winter when Bucky promised Steve would beat whatever was coming for them and they’d be old men on a porch together, aching joints and brittle laughs and smiles with teeth missing but in their heart-of-hearts they’d be the richest men in the world.

If Steve lets himself _want_ , he hears that in those words.

“And then Steve Rogers,” and the feeling is gone again, and Steve feels himself curl like a leaf at the edges, die a little for it; “because he’s a moron, but like I said, a hero,” Bucky huffs, not a laugh, but something that comes before it, that is small and scared and not quite strong to survive the world yet, and gets snuffed out before its time, and Steve mourns all of it.

“He came to let us know it was done. And the universe was safe.” He can feel Bucky nod to himself with that, because Bucky lets his hand move ever so slightly on the handle of the knife: away from Steve’s neck. Safer. “And maybe show off a little,” the longing, and this time it's tinged with a bitterness Steve wants to believe is for all the right reasons that his soul has held deep and true for more of his life than he thinks he can name.

“And to make sure his shield was in good hands, just like we’d talked about,” Bucky words trail; not abrupt, but like he doesn’t have more to say, and if this _were_ Steve, which is clear Bucky still doesn’t buy: if this _were_ Steve, he’d know. He’d know that before Thanos, Steve had told Bucky he wanted out. Wanted to be done. He wanted to live, and to breathe, and to feel the sun on his face and not wonder how long it would last: he just wanted it to last like it did for anyone else—until he stopped breathing, hopefully with a smile on his lips and his heart at ease.

He hadn’t said in so many words that his heart would be at ease because Bucky would be at his side, and his smile would be because Bucky’s hand was in his, but that was a given. He wasn’t going to give the shield to Bucky, because they’d told him, they’d _always_ told him that he needed to learn to be a little selfish and of course he wouldn’t go against Bucky's wishes, Bucky’s _will_ but he wanted that, with Bucky. Steve wanted that with all that he is.

So it was always going to be Sam, who he held the shield out for, and hoped like hell he’d take it. When Bucky had nodded, and agreed, Steve had felt lighter than he could remember feeling in years.

“Steve Rogers went home.”

And that steals Steve from his memories, steals the lingering sensation of that peace and the lightness and that joy straight away because Bucky's words are without inflection again, but not the same: this time, and only because Steve has known him his whole life—this time, Steve can hear the rage in them.

“Steve Rogers,” Bucky smacks his lips, and he sees in his mind a small, scappy kid who did that when someone called a ball a strike. 

“Steve Rogers went home after he put a bunch of rocks where they belonged, to a time where _he_ always felt like he belonged, and was stripped from like so much fucking...” and that’s when Bucky withdraws, stands, and Steve takes a moment to breathe in deep before he lowers himself to sit on the ground and look up at Bucky, take him in.

“Like so much wallpaper, like a prisoner against his will.” And Steve doesn’t know what to make of the fact that Bucky’s angry about his choice to leave—what he _thinks_ was _his_ choice to _leave_ —as much as he’s angry Steve had any viable reason to make it. 

“He made Sam WIlson Cap, and then he went home again.” And it’s the end of a story, but there’s no resolution. Buck’s face gives away nothing, but good god _damn_ –he is beautiful.

But then that beauty turns into a beautiful kind of wrath as Bucky flips his knife and smiles viciously down at Steve. 

“But Steve Rogers isn’t _here_ , motherfucker,” he snarls; “and we’ve long since reached the end of our countdown.”

Bucky stalks toward him, the one two steps but it feels bigger, longer, a real gap. Steve wants him to close it entirely. Steve wants it to disappear.

“You keep fucking with me, and it won’t end well for you,” Bucky warns, but Steve watches his eyes, for the first time. Steve catches his eyes and sees a lost boy unsure of how to make Steve stop shivering and help his lungs to work; he sees a lost boy leading men who believe in him when he doesn’t believe in himself but can’t let them know it; he sees a lost boy who’s enough of himself to _know_ he’s lost and that’s a miracle, that’s a _miracle_ that he’d made it through the fire and the fog and every unspeakable thing the world can imagine, made it through enough to remember again, to _know_ —

Steve sees, and he leaps, and he grasps as whatever he can.

“Skrull.”

Which makes no sense, and the quirk of Bucky's brow—imperceptible to anyone but someone watching as close, as unwavering as Steve—makes that very clear.

“Him, not me,” Steve starts to babble a little, afraid if he doesn’t run with this he’ll lose his chance. “They’re, well, aliens. Shapeshifters, specifically.” He exhales slow, and meets Bucky’s eyes, looks until Bucky’s willing to _hold_ —or else, forgets _not_ to, which is just as good, more than enough.

“I didn’t know,” Steve says, palms up in offering, in as much a show of souldeep truth as he can give just now, like this. “I didn’t know what they’d do, that they’d try to be _me_ , I figured they’d, you know, they’d be someone like, Fury, or Carol or somebody, I,” his voice breaks, because put to it now, apparently he hadn’t quite believed the idea of a _version_ of _him_ alongside every other impossible thing—and how can he put into words what he _had_ thought? How can he say _someone who could say I’d be gone, I couldn’t come back, couldn’t stay here and someone else would have to take my place_ , someone who would be _believed_ when they said Captain America wasn’t available just now, take a goddamn number or pass the part along.

 _Jesus_. 

“The look was an absolute guess on his part.” That feels important to say. Steve doesn’t know precisely if it’s important in case Bucky really does feel cheated as much as grateful that Steve grew old, if without him, or maybe because there’s something deep and innate inside _Steve_ that needs Bucky to know that ring on that imposter’s finger doesn’t mean what he thought, what he _thinks_ —

“The skrull, that is,” Steve grasps at the straws of context, of relevance outside the contents of his heart. “Apparently they’re good at,” he waves his hand around, aimlessly: “that.”

Bucky stares at him while Steve’s heart just pounds before he finally asks.

“What do you want?”

For that, Steve has a ready answer. It’s maybe the only thing he’s said so far that he knows in his bones and doesn’t have to guess around, doesn’t have to think up on the fly.

“Just,” he whispers, but then gathers the force of his voice to match the force of his conviction, and doesn’t blink once when he tells him:

“Just what you said, Buck. But for real,” he watches the darting of Bucky’s eyes, the motion of those depthless pupils, back and forth and back so quick: weighing Steve’s soul against a feather, his heart against the truth and Steve was never worthy, Steve was never what they made him out to be but in this, for _Bucky_ he hopes to god, he _swears_ to god he will live the rest of his days doing everything he can to meet that mark as close as any man breathing.

 _Please_ —

“To come home. I just wanted to come home.”

Bucky doesn’t move toward him, or make any move to show he believes. But he doesn’t move away, and he tucks the knife away instead, and that feels like it means just as much. Maybe more.

“Bucky,” Steve leans forward, just a bit. “I’m _me_.”

And Bucky’s lips drop open without any sound. And suddenly, the crash of a wave that takes Steve down with it, all the things that hadn’t hit him yet about _what those words mean_ , what they carry on their backs: it hits him.

It hits him _hard_.

“I’m _me_ , and you,” Steve feels like the knife is back at his throat, except that it’s pretty, severing, drawing blood and ready to behead him.

“You thought,” Steve chokes. Something inside Steve that’s vital to his very being shrivels up and blows away on the breeze, on the breath he can’t draw for the revelation that’s dawning on him, that’s raising bile through his throat.

“You thought I’d just,” he gasps, and reaches for Bucky who is too far to touch, even if he’d allow it and why would be? Why would when he— 

“You thought I _left_?”

Bucky just blinks. That’s all the answer Steve needs and the sob in his throat is more vile, more painful, more horrific and reflective of all that he’s feeling for the fact that it gets caught and sinks into his blood, like he goddamn _deserves_.

“I’m sorry, oh my god,” Steve can’t even catch his breath, feels like he’s mouthing more than speaking because that’s all he has the space, the energy, the _will_ to harness and make real: “oh my god, I’m _sorry_ —”

Bucky takes a step, toward him: tentative. Steve knows it, but it doesn’t register. It barely counts, now.

“You’re my heart,” Steve’s saying without thinking, truths without worrying, without knowing or caring for their consequences. “You _have_ my heart and you thought I, you thought I would…”

Steve looks at him, now, rather than the ground. Steve looks at him, and reaches again, and this time he can touch the tips of his boots. Steve leans forward, and can wrap his fingertips around part of Bucky’s shins.

“I never said it,” Steve breathes, gaze pleading. “I never said it because I told myself you knew but you didn’t,” and then worse, _worse_ settles in Steve’s chest because, because—

“Or _did_ you, and you couldn’t trust it?” The half-formed possibilities are endless, and world-shattering: every single one. “I, I—”

Steve’s shaking. He knows he is. Because the earth might be shaking instead, and maybe it is, but the stone in his heart: it’s moving too fast, it’s bruising too hard. Maybe it’ll tear a hole, finally, and put him out of his goddamn misery, this time.

He’ll deserve it. He’s thought that before— _so dramatic_ —but this time.

This time, it’s incontrovertible fact.

“I know I haven’t,” Steve tries to make known the secrets he thought were shared. “I—”

He fails, and he doesn’t have time to dwell, to waste on those failures so he tries honesty of a different kind. A different way to confess what he thought was known wholly between them, like blood between shared veins. 

“I was so scared when I left, that you’d, that when it was all done you wouldn’t,” he draws in a shaky breath.

“I'd lose you, I’m always losing you,” Steve shakes his head, and he didn’t realize, exactly, that he was crying until the motion disturbs the flow of the tears. “What the hell kind of person am I, how the hell can you love a man who can’t fucking _keep_ —”

And then there are hands. Soft hands, warm hands. Hands cupping cheeks, his jaw, and _holding_ so soft like Steve is worth something, like he’s made of stardust and worth keeping in this universe for half-a-second more. Steve looks up, because he can’t quite believe; but he didn’t realize Bucky had stepped just a little bit closer still. He hadn’t realized his hands on Bucky’s legs had been jostled away so that Bucky could kneel beside him, and take his face in his hands, and run his thumbs across the bones of Steve’s cheeks. 

“You’re not here to protect me,” Bucky whispers, and it almost seems like he’s looking at _Steve_ for the very first time. Almost, not quite, but maybe.

 _Maybe_.

“Jesus, Steve. I love you more than life. _You_ , not for what you can do or what you can save me from,” he strokes back and forth, back and forth across Steve’s face with the pad of his thumb on either side and Steve thinks, no—Steve _knows_ he could live in that touch and be happy, happier than he’d ever deserve, for the rest of whatever breaths are left to him.

“Not for what you can’t do or save me from,” Bucky repeats, as if that matters, and Steve thinks idly that probably it matters a whole hell of a lot but right now but he’s lost inside that touch, so deep: “but you. All of you.” 

It takes him a moment, a minute: a lot of minutes, to be fair, but when he surfaces, and Bucky’s still stroking his cheekbones Steve feels his eyes widen as much as his lungs contract, and his heart _hurts_ :

“Me,” he says, wondering and devastated and like there’s a heaven and he’s touching a part of it without having earned a damned glimpse: “ _god_ —”

And he’s choking, he’s shaking, he can’t stomach air and he feels like he knows what life is, suddenly, because for all the times he’s lingered on death’s door he’s keenly aware in these moments what it means to be _bereft_ of it, of life because he can’t see, he can’t think, he can’t —

“Breathe.”

He can hear, though. He can hear salvation through decades and love and loss and all the things that really didn’t need to be put into words, apparently; they didn’t need that in order to be felt, or known.

“Come here,” but the words follow, come after the motion; he’s drawn to a familiar chest before the command is given, not that he’d fight in in any form, in any body, in any lifetime or universe. 

“Come _here_ , and you goddamn _breathe_ with me.”

And there’s air in the world. Steve notices, senses it again, and that’s a start.

“Too fast,” and there's a hand on his chest, pressing with a full splayed palm and Steve remembers this, knows exactly how to lean into the touch so he can be felt, be _known_.

“I don’t care what you are, or who you are or when,” the voice— _home_ ; Steve knows it’s talking to him. “Too fast,” it proclaims, strong and brooking no argument: “so you _breathe_.”

So he does. It’s hard, and it hurts for a while, and there are times where he doesn’t even know if he’s managing or he’s deluding himself and there’s movement around him, a shifting of the weight that’s shielding him from the world and holding him close and he thinks maybe he gasps, or keens, but the there’s a chest against his chest and a hand upon his heart and fingers dancing down his spine like a song or a drumbeat and Steve thinks this is the rhythm he’s built upon. These are the foundations, the building blocks of all he is and he remembers.

He _remembers_.

“There you go,” the voice says, and Steve realizes he is breathing. He realizes that he can see, so he looks up, and Bucky’s eyes are so clear, so bright, so fucking stunning.

“ _There_ you go,” Bucky breathes deep, and his hands don’t stop touching, stroking, _being_ with Steve like they were made for that, somehow. Like Steve could ever be worth that sort of thing.

“Now a little longer, little deeper,” Steve listens, because that’s what that voice, that tone _means_ : “then hold.”

He does, and he watches Bucky’s eyes again in the process: so gorgeous. So perfect.

Even if he didn’t love them that way, the way that he does and has for as long as his heart can remember—even if he didn’t, Steve doesn’t know how in the hell he could ever leave them.

And he _does_ , and then some. So there’s no way.

There is _no way_.

“Now out, real slow,” the voice reminds him, and he obeys willingly, happily: “real slow, Stevie, come on,” oh, and he called him, he said, like he _believes_ —

“Follow me, just follow me and we’ll, we’ll...”

Steve knows what he means, and so Steve pays close attention to the way Bucky's chest rises into his, and makes them touch carefully, but in perfect time because that matters. Not just because Bucky asked, but because it means the whole goddamn world to touch him like that. For their hearts to brush in passing.

“You’re you.”

Steve's breath catches, and Bucky’s hands on his still, hesitant, ready for some unnamed calamity but Steve just looks up, and hopes his eyes convey what his—even brushing against Bucky’s so goddamn close—is saying: yes, _yes_ , please believe me, _please_ —

“But he was,” Bucky starts, furrow between his brows that Steve wants to smoothe with his fingertips, or his lips: he’s not picky.

“Not,” Steve says softly, and this time he reaches for Bucky’s face, cupping his cheek; he’s caught his breath, but his heart’s still racing just a little. 

“He wasn’t me, Buck, I swear.”

“What,” Bucky swallows, and this time Steve’s thumb is, perfectly by chance, in just the place to _feel_ it. “What was he?”

“Something,” Steve takes a moment, this time, to find words, because Bucky’s skin is underneath his hand and he’s not in a hurry anymore. “Something to tie the loose ends I don’t think I can tie myself right now,” he settles on, but that’s not quite it.

“A favor,” one that Steve doesn’t think he can ever repay but that he also thinks isn’t one he’s expected to, that was given freely; “one I probably should have thought through more, obviously, but I, I jumped at the offer and I, I can’t—”

“ _Breathe_.”

Bucky’s hands are back on his face, even if Steve’s palm hasn’t left Bucky’s cheek, and Steve didn’t realize his breath was getting short again until Bucky points it out, and guides him home again.

 _Home_.

“I’m not okay, Buck.”

He knows he says it like it’s confession, and Bucky is the only power in the world who can absolve but he feels the quirk of Bucky’s lips from where he touches Bucky’s cheek and he looks up again, and Bucky’s smile: Steve didn’t know something could be so open and yet so sad; so understanding and yet so wishing that it wasn’t.

“Oh, Steve,” Bucky murmurs; “I know.” 

Steve's breath catches, but not in a bad way. Steve’s world rights itself, because Bucky, _Bucky_.

Bucky _knew_.

“I’ve always known,” Bucky runs a thumbprint over Steve’s bottom lips. “I’ve tried to be there, whenever I’ve been able. Whenever I was _me_ enough to catch you,” he smiles, that impossible smile holding all these untenable things: that smile adds another horrible truth to itself, and that’s regret for the times he couldn’t, for the times the world stole from him far more than it could ever steal from Steve.

“I’ve tried to make sure there was always a safe place to land if you fell,” Bucky brings both hands, now, to hold Steve’s face firm, close, dear.

“It’s okay to fall, Steve,” and it’s like those words, simple as they are, unlock something. It shouldn’t be those words, maybe, and perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps it’s the person who says them, and the touch of his hands.

“I need to figure this out,” Steve says softly, another confession but also something strong, a press under his breast bone, tight at his sternum like it wants to be free and this is the first invitation it's had to try. 

“I don’t know how.”

That part’s harder, but Bucky’s eyes on him, Bucky’s hands on him don’t change and Steve entertains the absurdity that maybe, just maybe, the fact that he needs, the fact that he doesn’t know, the fact that he isn’t sure he can _do this_ doesn’t make the person he holds dearest, loves most in this world want to run.

Precisely the opposite, in fact, or so it seems.

Steve feels like he didn’t realize he’d let the darkness conquer him until the light of that fact starts to dawn.

“I know they’d help,” and Steve doesn’t have to name their friends, doesn’t have to point to the way Sam would step up, and Bruce would find techniques, and Rhodey would mobilize the best the government had for a veteran, regardless of the overwhelmed system to pick from; the way Pepper, even, would locate every specialist with every credential and the strongest confidentiality agreements known to man, and Thor would invite him to New Asgard to see whatever passed for a healer there, just as the Wakandan Royal Family would offer the same: Steve doesn’t have to say it. 

Just like Steve doesn’t have to say that as he is, right now, he could never accept. He could never say enough to make it known there was a need to offer.

“But the world wouldn’t understand, even at its best it wouldn’t. And with,” Steve breathes deep, and Bucky’s hand is on his chest to trace it for—seemingly—the simple fact that it can be; that _they_ can be. 

“I don’t think I’m ready, to ask,” Steve says, so fucking small in every part of him, from his voice to his body to his soul but it’s the truth. It’s his truth. “To, to...”

Bucky is silent, but steady, so steady. And Steve trusts in his steadfast being, without so much as a hint of faltering, to push through.

“I wrote a letter,” Steve nods to himself. He wrote a letter that Carol promised would get where it needed to go, as soon as it needed to get there. “I’ll be gone before they get it, but only just. They’ll know the truth.”

“Okay,” Bucky says simply. Like that doesn’t matter to him at all. His hands on Steve are the most beautiful thing, the most _important thing_.

“There’s a place,” Steve starts to explain, to make it clear, or maybe make his case for what he’s going to ask, what he’s going to do; “that’s why the Skrull, that’s why,” he falters a little, because while Bucky never wavers, his eyes flash with pain. And Steve’s grateful that he can see it, see _something_ and see it clear as ever in that gaze but goddamnit, he _aches_ so fierce that _that’s_ what he has to see. 

“I’d never leave you, Bucky,” Steve says with every part of him, with every ounce of certainty, with every beat of his heart: “I’d _never_...”

Bucky’s hands on his cheeks move closer, somehow. Most importantly, however: Bucky bows his head to press lips—not to kiss, there’s no pressure, but the warm press of his mouth at the hollow of Steve’s clavicles and Steve shivers, and his pulse pounds into the bow of Bucky’s lips and it’s everything.

It’s everything Steve thinks he could ever need.

“Carol Danvers,” he gathers the strength to say; “she found me, I don’t even know where or when, but she found me, and she told me there were places in the universe that could help.”

Steve swallows, and prepares to ask the question, to ask Bucky to give up his life, and literally his world to try this, to hold Steve’s hand on the whim, on the off chance that—

“When do we leave?”

Steve stills, blinks, and frowns. Doesn’t understand until Bucky’s hand is suddenly at his chest again, and Bucky’s lips are curled upward now with less sadness, and more of the exasperation, the fondness, the _love_ Steve remembers more than anything else in the world.

“End of the line, you fuckin’ punk,” he exhales, and Steve shivers with it. “I don’t make empty promises, Stevie. I’m _with_ you.”

And Steve holds to him, grasps him so close, and he’s blown away to be met exactly, for every press of skin and muscle, breath and beat of blood to be mirrored because they are together. They move in tandem and Steve lets himself think, lets himself wonder: maybe this sort of line is the kind that doesn’t end.

Maybe.

“Let’s see if we can both get our shit straightened out a little, yeah?” Bucky says, clasping his shoulder as he presses his palm still to the center of Steve’s chest and it says everything in the world, everything it needs to and more, and Steve thinks yes.

This is where they go from here.


	2. Coda

Sam Wilson gets two letters on the same day.

The first is not a letter, exactly, but an invitation to share a Notes file from a phone number he’s grown to know well enough, Wakandan country code. It’s _huge_ , and has been in the process of being edited for near-on a year, if you subtract the five they’d lost, and Sam wonders what that means about the choice of where the shield went. But it’s a lot of bullet points, a few pointed anecdotes, and a few heartfelt (for them) notes from the only person in the world who’d ever walked a man through being Captain America, who’d ever watched the changes and anticipated the needs: it’s a primer, it’s advice, it’s snark and only half sincere and Sam doesn’t have time to dwell on what it means when he pulls up the number to send a smartass message in return and the number’s not available. 

Because that’s when the other letter comes.

And the other one, well. The other one’s a real letter, but it comes by way of a cat with tentacle tongues that scare the shit out him, who upchucks it so violently Sam’s a little afraid to read it.

At first, he’s angry. After that, he’s hurt. In the end, he’s both of those things, but he’s also a little proud, because finally, _finally_ , some small part of what he’s been saying to that bullheaded bastard about getting some goddamn _therapy_ must have gotten through.

He’s also a little afraid of what to do with the hairball that came with the letter, to be honest, but he’s Captain America now. He'll figure it out.

Or he’s pretty sure there’s gotta be like a not-S.H.I.E.L.D.-anymore assistant Steve never used who can figure it out for him, so. This is his life now, apparently.

He guesses that works.


End file.
